The police in the Western Bahr el Ghazal State capital, Wau, on Wednesday, apprehended eight youths for holding a meeting to orchestrate a revenge attack on a rival youth group.

According to the state’s acting police commissioner, Brigadier General Awuw Nyiriel Dawol, the group was arrested at the Youth Reformatory Theatre in Wau town.

“We have arrested these people because we learned that there are youth who gathered and were planning to carry out a response attack on a certain group. As police, our role is to control a crime before it happens. Our director told us that no crime should happen in the town so we are not sleeping,” he said. “We have executed our duty and we are preventing crimes so we have arrested them preemptively.  We do not want these youth to harm themselves.”

“They told us that they were meeting because one of their colleagues was wounded so we will investigate them and after that we will take their pictures and we will allow them to go,” Gen. Nyiriel added.

Meanwhile, Wau Municipal Council Mayor Paulino Sead Uku confirmed the arrest of 8 youths but said they were not armed.

“We arrested 8 youths from different groups but they did not have any weapons or knives in their hands but we found them at their center planning to carry out their operations or trying to attack each other but we will not allow this,” said Uku.

He said the municipality will not take any action against the arrested youth because sometimes they are useful but they need to drop their antisocial attitudes.

“People will think that the mayor of the town is against the youth but no, if you can remember, you will acknowledge that the municipality had a road project and they see the youth actively and positively. Every citizen should also report a crime in the town to the police by calling 112,” he said. “We do not want to take them to prison because most of them are students. If we detain them, it will be a waste to the state so we will try to collect information and we will let them go home but they have to stay away from crimes.”

Uku urged the youth to desist from unlawful behavior.